While her previous such tastings have featured gourmet chocolate, fancy cheeses and odd-flavored soda, the focus of this was one was international candy.

Those who showed up got to sample sweets and candy from Germany, Japan, Turkey, Ireland, China, Great Britain, Italy, Australia, France and the Netherlands.

Some of the selections were quite sweet, others were only a little sugary. Many of them featured intense spices or tastes. And the offerings Reichert had gathered featured more natural flavors than are often found in American candy, like what is most commonly gathered by trick-or-treaters on Halloween.

Hanson said she had seen the event listed in the Fort Morgan Times and thought it sounded like fun.

Favorites among the offerings for the women were the Quadratini lemon wafer cookies from Italy and the Hamburger Speck marshmallow/jelly/sugar cubes from German.

A similar thing happened for a full family, with multiple generations coming to the library/museum Tuesday night.

"My mom actually heard about it and thought it'd be interesting and asked us all to come," Amanda Knox of Fort Morgan recalled.

They wound up with the grandparents, a pair of sisters and their children all showing up and sampling the international treats.

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Nina Leon of Wiggins said she was glad she came to this tasting event.

"She made it so beautiful," Leon said of the spread Reichert had set out in the Children's Library. "It was appealing."

But she expected no less.

"We had come to the cheese one and thought 'If this is anything like the cheese one, we're going to like it,'" Leon said.

That certainly proved to be the case.

"I thought it was delightful," she said.

Leon said she particularly liked the chance to try candies from other countries that normally wouldn't be readily available to sample.

"I think my favorite was the Turkish delight," she said of the powdered sugar-coated cubes of a citrus jelly candy. "It's connected to the Narnia books, and it was everything I expected."

Tlythia Isaac of Brush came with her fiance to check out the different offerings.

She said the word "candy" was what drew her in, and it was something free and fun for them to do together.

"I liked the YoYo Bar best," Isaac said of the hazelnut and chocolate candy bar from the Netherlands, but she also enjoyed the Jaffa Cake.

But the only candy Reichert would run out of was the Nougat Chabert Guillot from France, which was a raspberry and vanilla nougat with almonds in it.

Something that was quite divisive among the tasters was the Kookabura Licorice from Australia, which was a strong-flavored black licorice.

There also were hard candies with lemon, raspberry/lychee and milk chocolate flavors from Germany, China and Japan, respectively, a steamed rice cake stuffed with red bean paste Mini Daifuku candy from Japan and a chocolate-topped nutty Boland's Chocolate Bites biscuit from Ireland.

Reichert said she got all these candies from four stores in the Denver area. The YoYo Bars and Turkish delight came from the Middle East Market at 2254 S. Colorado Boulevard, the Jaffa Cakes, hard Lemon Drops, Kookabura Licorice and Boland Biscuits acquired at Rocket Fizz at 1512 Larimer St., the Mini Daifuku, milk chocolate hard candy and Lychee Drops bought at Pacific Mercantile Asian Market at 1925 Lawrence St. in Denver and the Hamburger Speck, French nougat and lemon wafers purchased from the Cost Plus World Market chain stores.

Kauffman was happy to hear where they were available.

"They would be great for Christmas baskets," she said.

And several other people expressed that same sentiment of potentially buying such candies for gifts.

Reichert said she was pleased with how it had turned out, although quite a few people who had registered did not show up. But that was something to be expected from a weeknight event.

"The crowd that did show up was really talkative and had a lot of fun," she said.

And Reichert's decision to move the tasting event downstairs into the Children's Library instead of in the Howard Rollin Memorial Community Room worked out well.

"Last time we did (a tasting), we had fewer stations and it was still really crowded and hot," so she tried moving it. "The Children's Library is a more relaxed environment and we had more room to move about."

With another successful tasting event to her credit, Reichert said she plans to hold more such events in the future.

"This has been one of the most fun events we've had over the year," she said of the tastings. "And it seems like it's a crowd favorite, so we intend to keep doing them."

But she is looking for ideas for what types of food or (nonalcoholic) drinks people might want to sample.

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